AROUND THE GARDEN

For gardeners, mid-July used to be a time of lowered expectations: some garden centers close until the cooler days of fall; plant catalogs cease to pour in via the mail; roses give way to black-spot blighted leaves.

Much has changed, however, with the proliferation of long-blooming varieties of several plants. “Knock Out” roses, blooming bright as halogen lights, have taken over the marketplace. “Endless Summer” hydrangeas really do flower for most of the summer.

There are even “Extended Bloom” and “Repeat Bloom” daylilies on the market now. What does this mean for gardeners who have slaved for years to have at least one plant in bloom every week, all summer? Well, a diehard gardener might just ignore these copouts, and continue dead-heading (and watering) the roses and daylilies.

But even without genetic manipulation, it’s possible to have blooming hydrangeas from Memorial Day to Columbus Day – with an array of different varieties. The climbing hydrangea comes first, with flattened blooms on woody vines that romp up tree trunks or across stone walls. Then the Oak-leaf hydrangeas begin to extend their rose and ivory panicles. By mid-summer, the Mopheads (usually blue, lavender or pink) explode, easily making up for the fireworks that weren’t. And finally the Peegees (wisely shortened from Paniculata grandiflora) put on their show.

For those who aren’t militantly anti-hybrid, it’s not a bad idea to mix in a few of these new plants. They do add a jolt of color, and Knock Out roses are so maintenance-free you might have to pick up a second hobby.

Still, we all want some perennials in flower, and the easiest ones reside in the huge family known as the Compositae, or Asteraceae. These are the flowers-within-a-flower, with colorful rays fanning out around a multitude of tiny florets in the center. Think daisies, mums, dahlias, coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, asters, and on and on.

Happily, many of these extremely hardy perennials also spread themselves throughout the garden. Nobody ever has just one Black-eyed Susan after the first year.

But now is a great time to look for holes in your garden, places where next year something could bloom through July and August. The trick is to shop for these plants in early autumn and plant them as soon as the days are a little cooler. Or, shop in spring at a good nursery, one that carries more than just spring bloomers. This takes discipline – who can pass up a columbine in bloom, in favor of an aster that doesn’t even have any buds yet?

Even harder to find early in the season are mums (does anyone know why they are now called Dendranthema?) I finally bought the gorgeous Sheffield Pink mums on-line from Burpee’s in June, after hunting all over Connecticut.

One way to get mums to winter over is to take spring cuttings from a friend’s garden, rooting and planting them out before the 4^th of July. Those potted mums at the supermarket in September probably won’t survive the winter, unless you have perfect growing conditions for them.

When all else fails, you can always fall back on interesting foliage – after all, there’s a whole lot of it out there!